


All That's Best of Dark and Bright

by Vulgarweed



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Jewelry Fetish, Multi, Rivalslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:55:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melkor has a secret weapon in the Cold War for Arda: the vanities and ambitions and true longings of the artist--a god denied is a demon born. Fëanor has no ready defense when a known Liar speaks a little too much truth. Pity those caught in between.  Warnings: Ambiguous consent, unfriendly sex, partner betrayal with painful effects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That's Best of Dark and Bright

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally prodded by the "Make Love, Not Warâ" challenge at the Library of Moria slash archive--a call for creative enemyslash. For Deborah Judge, from her terrifying plotbunny, for our shared birthday. The title is gender-bent Byron.

***

"Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the hospitality of the Noldor, but..." said the arrogant guest, calm and at home at the great doors of Formenos. Who, in all the Blessed Realm, could those defenses have been built to guard against? Well the guest knew, of course, exactly whom it was that the house’s occupants feared. He himself had considered long how best to breach those walls, set as they were into the very rock of the hillside. At last the answer was obvious; the great estate opened in its front through a warren of smithies—perhaps he had only to ask.

The son of Finwë still wore his battered work gloves, and the soot of the forge streaked his face. He did not appreciate being interrupted at his work. "Hospitality," he hissed. "That means I must pretend to welcome you. I am sorry that deceit is not my talent."

"No, that is true," said the amused Vala who walked in a handsome form, though he had dimmed down his aura of power and dressed simply in robe and cloak, in a form not much taller than one of the Elves’, with long dark coppery-black hair tied behind him. "I have met none yet who can match my skill in that realm."

Was that intended to be disarming, Fëanor wondered as he turned his back and headed back towards his rough house, leaving the door open behind him. Melkor followed, and nearly walked into Fëanor's back as the Elf stopped short. "Did you think I would lead you straight to them?"

He was close, too close.

"Do you think I've come to steal them?" Melkor said quietly, smiling, joking with himself.

Fëanor said nothing.

"They _are_ only jewels," said Melkor.

Fëanor seethed.

"You think otherwise. Even if one of my kind were to ask it of you, you would not yield them."

"No," Fëanor said flatly, watching the planes of the Vala's face shift slightly. "No, because no other has claim to them, and much of myself is in them. I am no godling, but--"

"Like me."

"No! What am I? Of my kind, if we manage to make some great work once.....and once only..." he said, his voice trailing off. For the flame that had entranced him then was visible again.

"Once you managed," said his guest in his deep chanting voice. "I know what you touched once, and once only. Have I not hunted it for long Ages, in the dark reaches beyond the world? Have I not given my all to sing its freedom into being, and found myself cast out for my trouble? Do I not recognize it when I see it worked, and do I not know hands that have worked it?"

Fëanor felt it waking in his fingertips and recognized its earliest flickers of touch upon his mind. Half-aware that its stirring was because of the light stroke of the Vala's fingers upon his own, he cared not, entranced by its brightness. For it was a new creature with a hunger of its own, a fire-babe that weakened him to nourish it, and he was grateful for the wall that supported his back. The voice was in his ear now, warm and low: "Have you not longed for more? Do you not tire of toiling for crumbs?"

"In my dreams I have often thought - I have seen the Source as a River, with its water free to all -"

"As have I, Fëanaro," whispered the voice, steaming against his neck. "As have I. O, if only. It is guarded so jealously, how can we lesser not crave the merest taste?"

_This is not right_, said a voice in his head. _Well, never mind_.

"I have not come for the jewels," said the greater voice in his ear, belonging to the breath that brushed the soft lobe. "I have come for the jeweller. For in his life is the Fire."

"You seek to slay me, then?" asked Fëanor, realizing at last that his hands clutched strong arms, that a scent of cold sky filled his lungs and the body of the Vala leaned in close to his own, bringing his spirit to the surface of skin ripe for pleasing or plucking. Only jewels--but no. He thought in despair of losing the places he went when he became lost in his Silmarils, the only places where his spirit was at home. There were waterfalls and blooming flowers of flame; there was light that ran warm and light that flashed cool. There were frozen feathers of stone and caves within caves, royal palaces built of the earth's own flesh and alive with the earth's own mind. Leaning in and letting all else fall away, he could hear voices singing to him barely on the edge of audibility, promising him peace and joy and a shimmering throne worthy of a great maker. An entire city of luminous beings dwelled within each jewel's heart: a world of its own as big as everything and yet impossibly tiny and sealed within its hard shell. The maker had been walled off forever from touching its secret treasures. He could only adore from a distance, lest he shatter the casing and dispel the enchantment forever.

The pressure on his own shell was Melkor, and Fëanor cursed his own spirit-light for rising to his summons.

Fëanor shuddered in relief as Melkor’s gaze turned away from him to a rack of new swords that Fëanor now regretted not hiding. The Enemy reached out a hand to stroke a gleaming blade and laughed low in his throat. “Very little of such work has been seen in this realm,” he said finally, wryly. “I find them quite finely made and fair to the eye.”

“I would see your blood upon them if blood you have, Traitor.”

“Indeed, now that you have made them, they shall taste blood indeed – it is in their nature, and the metal itself escapes blame. Tell me, which of my brethren was it who suggested to you such a work? Or was it your own thought—your own Song, as it were?”

“It is you who bring thoughts of war,” Fëanor said, his voice surprising him with its flatness. “They come of your Rebellion.”

“Indeed, I have blood,” Melkor said, and nicked his finger with the slenderest blade and showed Fëanor its bright trickle before lifting it to his mouth. "Do you not understand," came that whisper, stepping free of its cloak of power, nearly pleading, "how difficult it is to step outside that Design? For even my part has been written. Yes, even the accursed Song---thinking for only a moment I did my own Will, I did His, and came to know it even as the notes left my throat. To the Void and back I have flown to get a moment's freedom from His plan, from that Almighty world-wreaker who has already scripted my destruction and yours, the better to display His glory against our ruin."

"You are lying," Fëanor said softly; only simple words slipped through the hands that cupped his face, long fingers along his temples.

"I am an excellent liar, my flickerling. In order to be such, I must _sometimes_ speak the truth."

Fëanor's mind was silenced from thinking when Melkor's mouth claimed his own. So alert and tingling were the flamelets that danced along the jaw where the Vala's touch stroked him. Bitter the taste was at first, but Fëanor parted his lips for more, thirsting for something he knew not what, welcoming at length the questing feel of Melkor's tongue on the tender insides of his lips, against his teeth. Within his closed eyes, the flame blossomed.

_I seek only to taste_, echoed a voice in his mind. Fëanor knew that to be a lie. But that did not stop his hands, rising to clench the rough cloth of Melkor's cloak and tangle in his dark hair, pulling strands unbound – for everywhere he touched it was as silver curving beneath his tools to bend and bloom, and within his own body was metal aflame, rapidly heating enough to yield to shaping.

Had he expected something like this? Yes, in his secret mind, seen it glimpsed in that insolent gleam, that there was nothing of his that was safe from this being. But had he examined it he might have thought that Melkor would threaten with his might; Fëanor might have thought to imagine himself forcefully ravished, able to at least keep shredded honour with satisfyingly bloody if hopeless struggle til body and spirit were torn at last asunder. But this - this was far better, and therefore far worse. For he was complicit in this crossing and therefore lost utterly, giving forth no sound but a breathy sob as the Vala's graceful hand worked down his back, settling strong agile fingers at the base of his spine beneath the ties of his leather smith's apron. The other hand went searching behind his neck, undoing his loose workman's plait, bringing down a black curtain in the corners of his sight.

Fëanor nearly fell when Melkor broke the kiss and backed away so slightly, arms still containing him, eyes the colour of iron regarding him, tongue-tip licking slightly swollen lips and rusty hair all tousled. Fëanor felt himself staring into an abyss, false and fashioned, deathly fair but cloaked with a veil he longed to rip away.

"None among the Noldor have ever despised me so much as you, Fëanor," he said.

"I have seen how there is no great work of heart or hand you will not spoil, nothing you will not covet....even more so, now...."

_Have you not even a cup of wine to offer a traveler?_ asked a voice in his head, accusing. Fëanor looked discreetly around, for signs of any others in the house at Formenos, for....

"They will hear no cry, your father nor your sons." Again, that smirk.

"Curse you," said Fëanor, breaking free from the embrace that held him loosely, reaching upon a shelf for a vessel and two finely-wrought cups. His hands were shaking and he could not conceal this as he poured. The dark liquid in the cool silver flowed and pooled like fluid sky, and within it Fëanor felt dizzy. Mist gathered before his eyes, and in the cup's depths he saw....

Upon a mountaintop they sat, the sky brighter than it should have been and strangely blue, the wind crisper and clean and wild. It rippled the fine dark red of Melkor's robe as he sat across a black-and-white checkered table, upon which lay his Silmarils, each upon a square. He started to raise a cry as Melkor's hand reached for one, but the Vala only moved it two squares toward him and drew back his hand, smiling as if waiting for a reaction to something he had done. _This was once my brother's house_, said Melkor in the vision. _Now it is ours_.

He started to fall forward into that world. Dimly he felt himself caught from behind by a strong arm and saw the cup rising. He blinked awake when it touched his lips and tipped upward. The first taste of it upon his tongue stopped his urge to struggle. Lightly did a fingertip of Melkor's brush a stray drop from his lips, and there it lingered. Fëanor closed his mouth around it and closed his eyes, which served to make his situation all the more vivid, not less. For he could feel and not see as Melkor took a drink himself, felt him swallow, felt his breathing change with the taste of it, and could feel himself adapting to the touch of his foe all along his back - how loathsome it was; how bereft he would be now were it taken away.

He took the cup from Melkor and drank deep. His knees went loose when he felt that the Vala's hand itself slightly trembled.

"Yes, my conceited one," sighed the deep voice in his ear. "Perhaps of all the Valar, I am the one whose desire is easiest to waken, since as you know, I _covet. _So sing no great praise of your own beauty just yet, though you are by far the fairest flame to bloom in this drab land of limits."

"Your words are fair, your intentions foul," said Fëanor. He could almost feel Melkor's elation growing at the sound of resignation in his own voice.

"I have not told of all my intentions," he said. "Indeed--bright prince, seven-souled--I become less and less certain I have intentions at all. Perhaps I only have longings and wishes, plans and ambitions, petitions and fervent hopes, visions of things that have not come to pass. Even the accursed can cherish dreams. Even more than the blessed do we have need of them."

Fëanor willed himself not to turn in Melkor's loose embrace. To look full-on into that steely gaze was to fly naked over a long plain of burning spear points and to feel an urge to fall.

"You too are known for fair words, Fëanor. Yet you say so little. Have you no fine language for me? Can it be you tune your ears to hear me? That would be good, as I have much to tell.

"Have you seen a storm, Fëanor? A true storm? I think you have not – there are none here. See..."

In the half-filled wine glass that hung loosely in Fëanor's hand, a veil gathered and began to whirl in a spiral - at first slowly and grandly, and then with a frenzy. Trails of cloud on the edges spun out into space as the center devoured itself. As Fëanor gazed despite himself, his line of vision sank deeper and deeper within the clouds' wicked dance until he felt himself battered by wind and water and seared through by a sudden flash of light brighter than any he knew and gone as soon as it was born, leaving behind a burn in his eyes and a cold prickle on his skin that lifted the fine hairs along the nape of his neck, where Melkor's breath sighed. A shattering noise that seemed to split the very sky. Beneath him now he saw trees bent to the ground, saw branches broken and flickers of flame arise in the brush around them, lapped to great size by the wild wind and hissing in hatred at the rain.

"But see," said Melkor softly, "how at the center, nothing moves. There is a place of peace there, though it passes as the storm moves by. You could dwell there, when my storm became too much, and yet know you were at the very core."

"What are you trying to tell me? Speak simply, without these illusions and riddles!" barked Fëanor, though not so firmly as he'd hoped.

"I have no simple speech for what I am trying to tell you. It is not easy for such as I - or such as you -- to understand that Time can be rare, dearly-bought and quickly-gone, and that sometimes we have little. Yet still it drags out before us, that wretched forever. I would as soon expand it all in one great and glorious storm that tears at the heavens for an Age and forever be done with all of it, including my simpering kind and their imperious Master. But that choice is not given me, and I have not yet seen how to take it by force."

"Seek to Mandos for your death, then. I cannot give it to you," said Fëanor, though he had much longed, at times, to do just that.

"You have no true knowledge of what death is. You only know making; you are blind to unmaking. It is why your work is not as great as it could be."

One more time the wine glass stirred, and a steaming brightness grew within it, capturing Fëanor's helpless eye. A plain of featureless black land stretched out under a wine-dark sky, riven down its center by a glowing crack of liquid flame. As Fëanor watched, the earth itself gave a great scream and heaved itself upward in convulsions, raising spiky peaks to the sky. From the top of the peaks spilled molten light, like radiant blood from a wound, like seed of nightmare life from the members of alien, unhallowed gods. Once again, Fëanor's vision closed in, and he seemed to hover at the mountain's groaning sides, feeling the terrible heat of the bright flow pass by him as the mountain vomited itself inside out. Farther up the mountain, where rivulets of magma trickled aside, they cooled and blackened into fanciful shapes, pooled and viscous like water of evil kind, frozen forever in swirls and eddies. Splashes and droplets hardened in an instant, turning to a sculptural mockery of a river, with glowing red embers deep within, pulsing and murmuring, hissing and bubbling. Fëanor felt his feet consumed in the red stream, and cried out as he looked down to see the mountain's boiling blood engulf his ankles. As it rose up his legs, he saw bone and sinew silhouetted in red and black, watched the substance of his body dissected and frozen in rock.

Melkor's arm tightened around his waist. "Hold fast," he hissed. "Reach into it."

So Fëanor felt himself bending, to dip his hands in the scalding red light. Though it burned, his hands flew through it freely, and he laughed in surprise to feel it squelching in his fingers and dancing upward into splashes. The vision changed, and he walked by Melkor's side in a steaming, hard-grounded garden of glorious shapes. Forms like filigreed, precisely ordered trees that had the shapes of bones and the graceful bends of worked silver rose above them. Statues of impossibly, monstrously graceful creatures guarded the pathway, all made from the same shimmering black rock, all with red jewels for eyes and glowing heat buried deep in their skin. _This was once my sister's garden_, said a voice in Fëanor's mind. _But now it is ours._ Above their heads, the smoky clouds parted to show a star, as red as the heart of the burning wet stone.

Fëanor realized he was no longer looking into the cup: that indeed, he had dropped it, and it was wine that had spattered his legs. The cool dripping wakened him. "You seek to seduce me to your aid," he said, low and wary.

Melkor weighed many possible replies: Fëanor felt them sifting through the slim fingers. At last he said, "You, I know, have no love for Them. You seek only to protect what is yours and to create in true freedom. That is my wish as well."

Fëanor whirled around, and yet Melkor did not give him distance. "You seek to destroy," the Elf snarled. "You seek to tear apart, to rend, to divide all the peoples with your lies."

"And you see where telling your truth has gotten you?" Melkor replied. "You keep this rude house with the small few who would follow? Would you be bound to this for all time? I think not, or I have misjudged your fire! Far from here, there are worlds, Fëanor! Not only new lands, but new worlds--where the sky is made of light and the earth of wind! Where the beings breathe blood and have veins of air! Where the very ground you walk upon is fire that blazes colours but does not burn! Where there are stars that give warmth as well as light, vast across, years in the crossing! Where the names of the Valar are unknown and the hand of the Overlord has never brought his tedious Laws to bear! Where no head has ever bowed to another."

"A skilled spinner of tales you are," Fëanor sneered.

"Fine," Melkor growled. "So be it, you of petty slave-mind. I am sorely disappointed, for I have seen your little jewels and known how you cherish them--above your mate, above your sons--and believed that you understood the truths pictured within them. Now I fear you are but a savant, who copies what he does not understand, who feels the fire within as blindly as a beast feels its urges, and seeks no deeper."

Melkor withdrew abruptly and whirled his cloak about as if to leave.

Before he knew what his muscles had done in reaction, Fëanor had clutched the fabric and spun the angry Vala around back into his arms. The fear and the insult twisted about like a storm, to a pinprick: Melkor's kiss, at the moment not longer hot but the bitter cold taste of ice and wind. Upon the table Fëanor was now, scrabbling upwards to get the hard wood out of his back and under him. The Vala's wrath was a brightening darkness, and something surrounded Fëanor like wings, sweeping him in, closing around him.

He did not open his eyes. Everything he needed to know was in his nose and on his skin--Melkor's fierce body, quivering with power restrained, pressed against him. The desire of one of the Valar was an awesome thing: it had a light and a heat and a vibration all its own. For all that Fëanor's voice was frozen, he felt it with a pang as his skin said yes, sighing into the teeth that bit his neck, the hand that brushed aside the linen of his tunic to stroke his thigh.

"Do they...is this done....among the Valar?" he gasped at last, lying back across the table as dishes went rolling away.

"Is what done, my black-fire?"

Coarse linen dissolved beneath the heat of Melkor's breath: the stretched-taut flesh of Fëanor's collarbone met the cool air, and then His mouth, drinking. "This....a male, with another....?"

"Ah...so you have never.  It needs courage, so I doubt it is known among Them."

Impossible -- but true, there it was: a type of fire the One never ordained, never imagined. Roughly Fëanor clenched his hand in Melkor's hair, drew that questing mouth back to his own. He had always been aware that this being's mere life force could kill him with a touch. The skin Melkor had made for himself was partly meant to protect he who stroked it as much as he who wore it. But those lips tasted like ordinary ones, like flesh; those sharp teeth not terribly unlike others.

***

Far away Nerdanel awoke. There was a twinge in her womb, and her heart was racing. Where the golden light burned in her chest and the red one in her loins, there was a throbbing. An illness. Impulsively she reached out for him who was gone, and then she knew the source of her pain.

***

"Melkor," Fëanor cried.

"For the first time, you speak my name," said the Vala whose hand now seared its way across Fëanor's leather apron. "What do you ask of me, fire-son?"

"Nothing....I ask nothing," whispered the Elf whose member was now so hard it throbbed in exquisite pain, straining into that mighty Hand through layers that burned away.

"Proud to the last," sighed Melkor from between his teeth around Fëanor's nipple, peaked and aching there. The Elf's body sang to him from its every surface, begging. He had only to wait for the voice to speak it, though the bright mind struggled against every yielding, so beautifully hard.

With a wild thrash, Fëanor wrenched Melkor's robe asunder, clutched his fingers around corded muscles, admired the workmanship of the smooth skin and curling russet hairs.

"Did you....?"

"I tried to make myself fine and strong for you, Feanaro," he whispered, wise fingers trickling around the tip, the head, tightening, teasing. Fëanor's nails dug into his back. The blood-marks that rose there looked real.

"You mock me. With everything you say, you mock me. Shut your mouth," said Fëanor, and reached to take his mouth again, but Melkor ducked. Swooped  
low, down and between, his claws in Fëanor's thighs and his lips and throat suddenly enclosing....

Fëanor swooned into it.

***

And far away so did Nerdanel, dragging herself from her bed. On all fours, trembling too much to stand, she crawled like a beast to her studio. She sought, and found there, a low vat; she bent over the edge, pressing her heated face and shaking hands into the surface of cool, solid clay. Within the pulsing veins of her closed eyes, she saw her husband's spill of raven hair, fanned out upon a table. Saw another head bent over him, reddish-dark; torn fabric and fair skin. She saw the familiar strong hands pleading at the flesh of another, and felt that pain within her core of lower belly. She, who had given birth to seven, for the first time cursed her own flesh for its weakness.

_This is why it is not done,_ she thought. _This is why the vows are sacred, for if he could but taste my pain_....Pressing one hand to her belly, her other hand groped in the clay.

_It is not another woman_, she thought, as her hand shaped a male member. _It is not an Elf-man either, she thought, as her hands gave it dragon's wings. It is...._

OH!, she thought, as her hand cramped full of singing needles. OH!, she thought, as her mouth filled with the taste of blood. She tried to drag herself to her feet, thinking wildly of sending up an alarm to someone....

To whom?

As soon as she tried to stand, she fell to her knees again, and was aware anew of the terrible sensation between her thighs, no longer quite pain but something else.

***

Hands in Melkor's hair, Fëanor cried out, wrenching the head away from where it had been, still feeling that tingle of tongue upon the opening never touched before.

"Would you take me like a woman?" he raged.

"Indeed yes, though you are not," said Melkor. The Vala's terrible calm bedamned, there was still a hungry tremble upon his flesh, a glisten of sweat upon his brow. "You wish it. You wish the power to make within your belly like that, without concentrating upon it, simply in being. That I cannot give you, but have a taste of Her greatness in pleasure, little fool. But still be male, with that staff of yours between us. Would you turn coward now, at the last?" And so Melkor spit in his palm, and there was an oil there that smelled of meat and smoke and metal, and half-dreaming, from hooded eyes Fëanor watched him stroking his member with it (and who would not have made his own so large, had he the power to shape his body?). Shamefully hungry, Fëanor wrapped arms and legs around him, and sang out in damned joy as he was riven deep, with a searing pain that turned its tail like a serpent and became something else indeed.

“Unjust,” he gasped finally, forcing his eyes open, forcing himself to look at Melkor’s face, forcing himself to twist his face into a smile. “I wish to feel you unclothed as well.”

Melkor’s growling laugh ground in Fëanor’s ear like hot sand. “I am as naked as you are,”

“No…I mean…”

Melkor took his meaning. “You could not survive that.”

“Maybe I do not wish to survive this.”

The Vala laughed again as he moved with a deliberate, insulting slowness. “That may be, but I wish you to live, and so you shall.”

***

Far away, Nerdanel stroked herself, hot and slick, aching--and cursing the moment she met him.

***

They moved together. Deep within, it seemed Melkor's shaft grew larger the more Fëanor scratched and bit, the more he cursed, the harder—just once--he smacked his hand across that handsome face. The stretching sensation was grand and terrible, the strokes against some devilish grain of aching nerves inside were wicked like a thinking weapon plucking out his spirit throb by throb. Sweat dripped down his chest and burned.

"Harder," he snarled. Harder. He should be slain with that spear. His mind filled with death, with blank eyes and splayed limbs and blood spilled over snow. It only hastened his spending, like gore erupting from a pierced heart, hot as life. And Melkor's molten metal cooled his burns inside.

Had it moved him?

Perhaps. Those long eyelashes fluttered, heart to heart racing, the dark hair lank and dripping. "O Feanaro, so fair," came a whisper. Melkor's hand, which threw his cloak to the floor, was shaking; those strong legs unsteady. With a whisper the cloak became a soft pallet, and the two fell to it, still entwined.

***

Desperate to soothe her aching, Nerdanel tried to force her hand away; her sleep-robe torn, her cheek pressed to her clay. Struggling to control her limbs, she crawled towards the door with its arched windows, the cool light of Telperion beckoning. All around her, her world had become most feverish and strange, and when she crashed the door open, she collapsed overwhelmed but unsurprised at the feet of the grey-robed figure who stood there.

Nerdanel struggled up to her knees as she recognized the Lady Nienna, throwing back her hood to spill silver beams across her pale, tear-streaked face, falling to the floor beside her. She spluttered to explain her state as the Valie’s embrace enfolded her, then realized she had to explain nothing. “Oh child,” Nienna whispered. “Oh dear one.”

Nienna’s body and hands were as cool and gentle as her pain had been hot and cruel. Slipping into her touch felt like being a young girl again, discarding her shift and diving into a clear, crisp spring that sang of Ulmo’s delight. They spread their tears and tongues across each other as Nerdanel let herself trust she could heal. But there were hopes severed that could never be rejoined, and burns that would never stop panging her; that she knew. Yet it was not futile to weep, and even to love—some strange being she could never dream of possessing as she had once thought she possessed her husband.

***

Her husband, that is, who opened his eyes to find those iron ones never leaving him.

“So,” asked Melkor almost cheerfully, long fingers in Fëanor’s hair, “You shall come with me? I wish to work with the finest artist I can reach in this land.”

“The finest artist ever of all the Eldar – is that what you are calling me?” Fëanor asked.

“No.” said Melkor. “The finest artist of them all, I cannot reach. She passed from my grasp long ago –I heard tell of her lying pale and still in the garden of Lórien after she had made her masterwork, before she flew away to never return. As I have said, perhaps, in a different way: it is not your finest jewel I love best: it is hers. And I will set that jewel in a crown of creation. I will pay it honour as none here can, Fëanáro: by letting you be as you are and do as you would do. Even though you wish to destroy me—I know you cannot, but you will be beautiful and terrible as you try.”

Fëanor sat up straight in a strange exaltation of horror and rage—and wild curiosity.


End file.
